For a brief moment, America experienced a national crisis unlike any other: a TikTok ban. A tad dramatic, but judging by the way people reacted, you would think the nation had lost electricity, water and indoor plumbing all at once. While the rest of the world carried on as usual, we were all left staring at our phones, mindlessly clicking the app icon as if sheer will would make it work the 100th time, wondering how to fill the void without our endless scrolling.
Most people did not actually believe the ban would happen. TikTok has been on the verge of getting banned more times than we can count, but it has always managed to stay. Then, suddenly, it was gone. I guess the saying, “you never appreciate something until you lose it” is true. In the app's final moments, it felt like one united community for once, with comments being filled with dramatic goodbyes, and creators doing throwbacks. Some people promised to migrate to Instagram and make it the next TikTok (bless their optimism), while others just accepted it would be gone. The ban only existed in the United States, so while Americans had a meltdown, the rest of the world was laughing at us. For 12 hours, TikTok was banned, and suddenly, people were forced to actually do something. Some people pretended they had signed up for this social detox, claiming it was “good for them”. Others desperately migrated to Xiǎohóngshū, a Chinese app also known as “Red Note”, hoping to find a TikTok fix. While some ran to Instagram Reels even after complaining about how cringey and boring it was, desperate times called for desperate measures and they were now convincing themselves it was basically the same thing (it was not). Watching an entire country mourn an app was both hilarious and slightly concerning considering the last time I saw the country this united was during the Olympic season.
I say this as a full blown addict, I caught myself opening the app at least 30 times. Lots of people went to Twitter (sorry, X) to vent their frustration, where the trending tab became a live feed of America’s breakdown. Memes poured in. Some tried to come to terms with it, others went through the five stages of grief in real time. Then there were the brave souls who opened YouTube shorts for the first time, only to be greeted with the same videos they saw on TikTok last week. Of course, not everyone made it out of this ban unscathed. Some people took this forced detox seriously and deleted the app altogether, only to realize they could not re-download it and have a whole new crisis. But like any true addict, many people found loopholes through VPNs. Others tried rediscovering old hobbies like painting or going on walks. Tragic really that it took a ban for that to happen.
Ultimately, Tiktok’s 12 hour ban showed us just how addicted we all are to doomscrolling, and just how much the world finds us amusing. Coming back to Canadians and Australians making fun of us while we were all mourning was unexpected. There were hundreds of videos clowning Americans and how we could not survive a couple of hours without an app, and how they thought they were free of us.
And yet, despite the chaos, the ban gave us all a moment of clarity. There was no endless scrolling or hyper-personalized algorithm. For the first time in a while, people just sat with their boredom. Some people took this as a sign to touch grass–literally. It was like collectively waking up from a dream, realizing just how much time we waste on an app. But, of course, any lesson learned was short-lived, because as soon as the app came back we all resumed scrolling.